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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
There's a reason why Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory wasn't a straight adaptation of Roald Dahl's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - it's just too weird - but nevertheless, Warner Bros and Tim Burton decided to try it anyway. The result was one of the worst book adaptations Hollywood has ever seen.
Gone was the fun of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Instead, there was stupid dark flashbacks to Willy Wonka's (Johnny Depp) childhood, followed by a cast of annoying kids who pale directly in comparison to the kids featured in the Gene Wilder classic. The plot closely follows that of Roald Dahl's book and is the classic story we all know and love - poor boy Charlie (Freddie Highmore) finds a golden ticket in a Wonka chocolate bar making him a competition winner for a tour around the Wonka chocolate factory. Later, the tour is revealed to be a competition by Willy Wonka to find a suitable child to take over the chocolate factory from Willie. The problem is, the film follows the book too closely and doesn't realise that some things which work in print don't necessarily work on film.
Even the songs in this version rather than being original pieces written for the film are taken directly from the book. None of them are as good as the Oompa Lumpa song from the Gene Wilder version and I doubt the Roald Dahl songs were imagined to be sung to the tune they are performed to when he wrote the lyrics in this book. The lyrics jar with the too-modern backing track and to use them instead of either Oompa Lumpa or original songs was a big mistake.
There's also an extremely silly sequence where Veruca (Julia Winter) is mistaken as a bad nut by some trained squirrels. Yep, it's really as dumb as it sounds and terribly choreographed. It looks like something from a bad comedy; in fact, this entire film could easily be passed as a parody of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and nobody would batter an eyelid. How the Roald Dahl estate would rather have seen this rather than a sequel to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Roald Dahl had passed away when rights were secured for this reboot) is anybody's guess. I'd even go as far to say that the late Roald Dahl's biggest mistake before he died was to stop production of the planned Gene Wilder sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator and consequently inflict this piece of torture on us instead.
Even Johnny Depp is bad in a role that really should have been perfect for him. It wasn't hard to imagine Johnny Depp in the role when he was announced as Willy Wonka but somehow he turned out to be absolutely terrible. For some reason he decides to play the part as a bizarre impression of Michael Jackson. Why would you even decide to do that? Willy Wonka is an eccentric but Billie Jean's not and never will be his love. If he was always going to play the part like this, he should have beat it instead of creating this awful thriller portrayal of the character. Gene Wilder is and always will be Willy Wonka and I wish Johnny Depp's take could be erased from my memory.
So is there anything good about this version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?
No.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is an abomination of a movie, like a film equivalent of the Atari game E.T. Johnny Depp does not play anything even close to resembling Willy Wonka here and the whole film follows the Roald Dahl classic too closely. This film deserves to be forgotten completely as if it never existed. Sadly, it won't be.
There's a reason why Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory wasn't a straight adaptation of Roald Dahl's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - it's just too weird - but nevertheless, Warner Bros and Tim Burton decided to try it anyway. The result was one of the worst book adaptations Hollywood has ever seen.
Gone was the fun of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Instead, there was stupid dark flashbacks to Willy Wonka's (Johnny Depp) childhood, followed by a cast of annoying kids who pale directly in comparison to the kids featured in the Gene Wilder classic. The plot closely follows that of Roald Dahl's book and is the classic story we all know and love - poor boy Charlie (Freddie Highmore) finds a golden ticket in a Wonka chocolate bar making him a competition winner for a tour around the Wonka chocolate factory. Later, the tour is revealed to be a competition by Willy Wonka to find a suitable child to take over the chocolate factory from Willie. The problem is, the film follows the book too closely and doesn't realise that some things which work in print don't necessarily work on film.
Even the songs in this version rather than being original pieces written for the film are taken directly from the book. None of them are as good as the Oompa Lumpa song from the Gene Wilder version and I doubt the Roald Dahl songs were imagined to be sung to the tune they are performed to when he wrote the lyrics in this book. The lyrics jar with the too-modern backing track and to use them instead of either Oompa Lumpa or original songs was a big mistake.
There's also an extremely silly sequence where Veruca (Julia Winter) is mistaken as a bad nut by some trained squirrels. Yep, it's really as dumb as it sounds and terribly choreographed. It looks like something from a bad comedy; in fact, this entire film could easily be passed as a parody of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and nobody would batter an eyelid. How the Roald Dahl estate would rather have seen this rather than a sequel to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Roald Dahl had passed away when rights were secured for this reboot) is anybody's guess. I'd even go as far to say that the late Roald Dahl's biggest mistake before he died was to stop production of the planned Gene Wilder sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator and consequently inflict this piece of torture on us instead.
Even Johnny Depp is bad in a role that really should have been perfect for him. It wasn't hard to imagine Johnny Depp in the role when he was announced as Willy Wonka but somehow he turned out to be absolutely terrible. For some reason he decides to play the part as a bizarre impression of Michael Jackson. Why would you even decide to do that? Willy Wonka is an eccentric but Billie Jean's not and never will be his love. If he was always going to play the part like this, he should have beat it instead of creating this awful thriller portrayal of the character. Gene Wilder is and always will be Willy Wonka and I wish Johnny Depp's take could be erased from my memory.
So is there anything good about this version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?
No.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is an abomination of a movie, like a film equivalent of the Atari game E.T. Johnny Depp does not play anything even close to resembling Willy Wonka here and the whole film follows the Roald Dahl classic too closely. This film deserves to be forgotten completely as if it never existed. Sadly, it won't be.